Formal documentation of a teacher’s performance or conduct is one of the most legally consequential things a principal does. It is also one of the most commonly done badly — not because principals are careless, but because most of them were never taught what good documentation actually requires. They learned on the job, often in…
It is 9:47pm. You are not at school. But you are thinking about the conversation with the teacher you need to have tomorrow, the parent email that came in at 6pm that you have drafted a response to three times and deleted, and the district memo that arrived this afternoon that will require you to…
I have been in those rooms. The hallway after the conference session when the professional context has finally loosened enough for the real conversations to start. The hotel bar at the end of the administrator gathering when the formal agenda has released everyone and the actual agenda — the honest one — begins. The parking…
There was a reason you came to this work. Something specific — a moment, a belief, a version of the future you were moving toward. Maybe it was the student you saw yourself in once. Maybe it was the conviction that school could be different from what it was when you were a kid. Maybe…
It’s not any one thing. It’s all of it, all at once, all the time. The parent who sent the email you haven’t fully processed. The teacher whose performance you’re watching carefully and worrying about quietly. The budget gap you’ve been mentally carrying since October. The student you placed in a situation and aren’t sure…
Going all in on this job is something I have done and something I am genuinely glad I did. I want to say that clearly before I say anything else — because the honest accounting of what all-in costs and what it means when the all-in finally runs out is not a disavowal of the…
I have said results, not excuses for the full span of my career in education. To staff who needed direct accountability. To students who needed a specific standard held. To myself on the mornings when the principal I intended to be was harder to access than the demands of the day required. And I want…
I want to say the true thing plainly before I say anything else: the principalship nearly broke me. Not in a single event with a clear date. In the way that things break over time when sustained weight is applied to a structure that was not adequately supported at the points where the load was…
There is the principalship that was described to you. In the administrative certification program, in the hiring interview, in the district’s public materials and professional development priorities and superintendent’s message about the principal as the most important leader in the system. The principalship of instructional leadership at scale. Of being the educational leader who shapes…
I want to give you something directly that you should have received from the institutional structures around you and have not. You have been waiting for permission to protect yourself while leading your school. You have been waiting for it from your district, which is not structured to give it and which benefits from a…